


Tied In Thread and Ivy

by Welsh_Woman



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family (off screen), Alternate Universe - Fairytale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Brief Mentions of Scott/Allison - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, Red String of Fate, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 14:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welsh_Woman/pseuds/Welsh_Woman
Summary: Stiles had always hoped that his thread would lead him on all kinds of adventures.He didn't really expect...this.





	Tied In Thread and Ivy

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the wonderful Cathy, aqua-ref on tumblr! Hope you enjoy! Happy Valentine's Day!

Stiles looks up at the towering… well, _tower_. The thing is completely flattened brick, no grip holds or broken stone for him to grasp ahold of. Not to mention, its height is very… daunting.

He looks at his hand, twitching his fingers slightly so that the red catches the fading sunlight.

The thread still leads upwards, to a window he can just barely make out.

Sighing heavily, Stiles has a brief moment of wishing that his thread led to a pretty face next door, like Scott and Allison’s did, but then he pushes that away with the reminder that he _wanted_ to see the world and hoped that his thread led him on daring adventures that he could brag about when he came back home.

Although, he had to admit, that none of his imaginings ever prepared him for _this_ …

Well, never let it be said that Stiles Stilinski is a quitter! Hanging on to the sudden optimism, Stiles renews his search of the tower’s base, eyes peeled for any irregularity that he could possibly have missed on his first quick scan.

The stone remains as smooth and unbroken as before, but there is a sudden tugging on his ring finger that has him looking up at the window again…

…just in time to see a dark-haired person dart back inside it, obviously spooked at being caught.

Stiles’ heart starts pounding like a drum in his chest, so many questions clamoring to be asked that he can’t seem to make any of them squeeze past the lump that has taken residence in his throat. He is completely speechless, a rarity in his life, and is scrambling for his waterskin to try to clear his throat when a loud, clear voice rings out.

“What are you doing here?”

Choking, in both surprise and because the water he was drinking went down the wrong way, Stiles has to hack out a few times before a raspy, “Following the thread.” manages to make it past his lips.

There is a long silence in answer to his question, long enough for Stiles to consider shouting up his answer again, just in case his companion didn’t hear him the first time.

He is just opening his mouth as the voice calls out again. “And this ‘thread’ led you here?”

Stiles doesn’t take umbrage at the man’s – is the person a man? They sound like one, or a deeply toned girl – tone. There are many kinds of ‘thread’ that could have led him here, and not all of them were very trustworthy. A lot were nothing but hokum and even Stiles called them out as hogwash, but he didn’t want to specify just which ‘thread’ he had followed.

His companion already seemed a bit spooked, Stiles really didn’t want to frighten them any more.

So, he simply says, “Yes, it did.” and leaves it at that.

What sounds like a snort carries on the air before a heavy sigh follows it. “You’re not going to leave if I ask you to, are you?”

Stiles squints up at the tower window. He knows that tone, he’s very familiar with that tone. Scott has used that tone more than once when he’s done something stupid that he doesn’t want Stiles to find out about.

“How am I going to help you if I leave?”

Another sigh floats down to Stiles, sounding so dramatically dejected that Stiles is stuck between actually feeling sorry for this guy – he’s still leaning toward the occupant being a dude – and biting his lip to keep from laughing.

“I just know that I’m going to regret this, but here.”

It’s a good thing that Stiles is looking up already or the large length of… _something_ that comes hurtling toward his head might have knocked him out. As it is, the… rope, maybe? ...hits the ground with a soft _thwump_ and he hears, “Climb up on that.” float down afterward.

Stiles eyes the climbing apparatus dubiously, one hand reaching out hesitantly to rub his fingers over it. Purely to test its durability and tension, of course.

He barely has his palm on it for a second before he’s jerking his hand back with a sudden shiver.

“Is this **_hair_**???”

Another one of those ‘woe is me’ sighs before might-be-a-man/might-be-a-woman snaps, “Yes, and it’s _mine_. Do you want to get up here or not?”

Stiles bites his lip, uncertain about how he feels climbing someone’s _hair_ to get to the window in the top of a tower. His thread is throbbing with a warm heat now as if it knows that Stiles is close to his Intended and he’s more excited to finally meet the person that’s meant for him than creeped out by the fact that he’s climbing _hair_.

Not that this _isn’t_ weird…

Shaking his head, Stiles just grabs ahold of the hair and begins to climb. When he doesn’t hear any groans or grunts of pain, some of his uneasiness fades as he slowly begins to scale the tower.

He only looks down once, unconvinced that he’s really made any progress, but that quickly proves to be a bad idea. He instead focuses on keeping his gaze on the window that is slowly coming closer and closer…

What he originally thought was a small square while standing on the ground, now reveals itself to be a pretty decent sized window, the perfect place to sprawl with a book or some scrolls without having to sit all day in a stiff chair.

His attention is pulled away from the open window by the length of hair strung up beside it; it’s slung over a hook of some sort, which would explain why he didn’t hear any sounds of pain. He’s just about to ask how long it took for Tower Not-A-Captive-Anymore to gather all of this hair when his eyes decide to keep following the length of hair, his words falling out of his mouth when his jaw hits the floor.

The reason for this was twofold; first, the hair that Stiles just climbed up _wasn’t_ just gathered, oh no. This stuff was _still attached_ to this guy’s head, which made him climbing up the stuff even _creepier_ than before.

The second part was really two smaller parts shoved together, which Stiles figured just made one big part and he counted it as one in his head. Point 2a. was that he found out that the Not-A-Captive actually _was_ a guy, and Point 2b. was that he was _the most gorgeous guy_ that Stiles has _ever_ laid eyes on.

And he grew up with _Danny_ , by the Moon!

Aside from the whole hair… thing, the guy was muscled and sturdy, arm easily scooping up strands of his hair like it was nothing and Stiles heard the sound it made when it hit the ground, okay? Those ebony locks had some weight to them, and the guy was just heaving them here and there like they were silky papers that were in his way!

Add that to the fact that this guy’s eyes seemed to defy a simple color code; depending on where he stood in the room and whether or not the sun was reflecting off them, those eyes were either a shimmering green, a deep chocolate, or some mixture of the two that bleed out to a golden ring outside the iris…

“I don’t think I’ve been up here long enough to miss much, but I’m pretty sure that you’re supposed to introduce yourself when you swing through someone’s window.”

Realizing that he’s just spent the last few minutes just staring at this guy, Stiles clasps his hands behind his back, using the motion to rub at the thread that is now throbbing in time with his heartbeat, before dipping in a short bow. “Stiles. Stiles Stilinski. At your service.”

“Stiles Stilinski?”

Grimacing a little, Stiles continues to rub at his ring finger, a nervous habit that he picked up ever since he first started to notice the red thread gradually winding around his hand. “My given name is a bit of a mouthful and can be hard for people to pronounce, so I just go by my nickname now.”

The man hums at that but doesn’t insist on hearing Stiles’ given name like so many other people do when they hear his explanation, which is kind of disappointing. Stiles wanted to see if this guy could actually say it, he _is_ Stiles’ Intended, after all…

“Derek.” The name pulls Stiles out of his contemplation, eyes wide when ‘Derek’ blushes dark enough to be seen under all of his hair. “Derek Hale. Is my name.”

Stiles has to grin at that, charmed by the fact that his Intended _blushes_ when confronted with attention, despite the fact that his name is making something niggle at the back of Stiles’ brain. “Nice to meet you, Derek Hale.”

Derek smirks a little, shaking his head for some reason as he replies, “And you as well, Stiles Stilinski.”

“So, you gonna tell me why you’re holed up in this tower, Derek Hale? Something tells me that it has to do with the fact that you have more hair than a whole village of people…”

The blush is back, and Stiles has to bite his lip to keep from cooing at that, more so when Derek rubs his hand over his face and mutters, “It’s fucking _embarrassing_ …” before sighing heavily.

“Well, before I get into that, there’s something that you should know. I’m only telling you this because I can already smell one on you, enough for me to know that you spent a lot of time together…”

Stiles gets what Derek is trying to say almost as soon as the man flashes blue eyes at him, the tension in his body lessening when the only reaction Stiles gives him is a slight nod.

“Okay, so you’re a werewolf. Did a grooming spell go wrong and give you more hair instead of cleaning what you already had?”

Derek huffs. “If it was only that easy… Is the Were you know capable of fully shifting?”

“By all the stars! You know how to fully shift?? Scott hasn’t been able to go anything farther than the partial! That is so impressive! How long have you been able to do that? Did you know as soon as you were Bitten? Because Scott-”

“I wasn’t Bitten. I was Born.”

“May the Moon be blessed…” Stiles has to sit down at that, nearly bruising his butt on the stone floor when he drops more than settles into his seat.

Born Weres are _extremely_ rare to come by, most coming to their power by Bite or Bond, so Stiles thinks his shock is appropriate for the situation. He then starts thinking of all the Were families he knows, trying to match Derek’s surname up to any others that he’s heard of and it’s not until he’s thinking of royal bloodlines that the name finally clicks.

Derek Hale.

 _Hale_.

“Selene help me, you’re the Were **_Prince_**.”

Derek’s face grows pinched, whether by Stiles’ tone or the title he gave him, Stiles’ isn’t sure, but he finds out when Derek says, “Don’t call me that. I am no higher or better than any of my brethren. Any Were can rise or fall, no matter Bitten, Bonded or Born.”

For once in his life, Stiles keeps the first thing he wants to say quiet, but that still doesn’t keep him from asking, “Does the fact that you’re one of the Hales have anything to do with the fact that you’re keeping the hairbrush market open and are stuck away like a bird in a cage?”

Derek frowns at that, before sighing and shaking his head. “No, this has more to do with me not paying attention and someone having a stick up their- Well, I think I should tell you my story and let you decide for yourself.”

Stiles leans forward eagerly, curious as to what led his Intended to this state and wondering if there was any way to help him, curling his hand when a sudden warmth around his ring finger has a stray idea popping into his head…

Derek begins speaking before Stiles can voice his idea, however, and he ends up biting his lip to keep from reacting the more Derek talks.

“I was relaxing in my full shift after a particularly trying full moon, having run much farther than normal during the night. There was this smell that had been teasing my senses, something that carried too many things from a village to be anything in the woods, but I kept from indulging too much into my instincts and following it. While there are many that have accepted Weres, there were still more that wanted to harm us, using the full moon as an excuse for slaughter.”

Stiles nods softly, knowing that there were more than a few people that had less than pleasant thoughts concerning Weres in his own village, Allison’s father Chris among them. It had been a bit of a tough situation when Scott’s thread led him to Allison, but her father seemed to let Scott’s actions speak for himself, as he wasn’t much of a believer in the power of the thread.

Pulling himself away from the bad memories, Stiles makes a motion at Derek to keep talking, something the Were does after a moment of looking Stiles over with a furrow in his brow, almost as if he wants to ask something. It makes Stiles’ cheeks heat, along with another throb from the thread around his finger, like it was trying to make Stiles reach out and complete the connection...

Folding his hands in his lap, Stiles squeezes his palms together and ignores the way that Derek’s gaze drops down to the movement, wanting to find out what had happened to him before he adds more the Were’s plate.

For a moment, it seems like Derek will ask, or rather _demand_ , about whatever it is that’s making Stiles smell the way that he is. Scott, after getting a hold on his powers and learning to use them, could tell whenever Stiles had a bad day or needed an extra hug. Derek’s only hindrance is the fact that he doesn’t know Stiles well enough, but he’s pretty sure that nervousness and anticipation have pretty distinctive smells, no matter _who_ you are.

Sighing heavily, Derek seems to get that Stiles isn’t going to give him anything to distract him from the second part of his story, so he rubs his hands over his face and speaks to a spot somewhere over Stiles’ left ear.

“There was a woman in the woods that seemed... particularly enamored of my wolf form. She didn’t seem deterred by my growling at her and kept trying to put her hands in my fur, so I had risen up to leave. She... um, she grabbed at my tail and I may have- may have bitten her for that.”

“Good.” Derek blinks at Stiles’ angry tone, making him shake his head and breathe out sharply. “She obviously was bothering you and you even growled at her to warn her away. If she _still_ tried to touch you after all of that, then I don’t feel any pity for her at all.”

Derek gapes at Stiles for a full minute, seemingly surprised that he might take the man’s side. Wasn’t Derek _just_ saying that there were people that accepted Weres? Stiles hadn’t run screaming when he showed him his Were eyes, so why was Derek so surprised that Stiles condemned the woman who touched him against his will?

Clearing his throat and once more turning his gaze so that he wasn’t looking Stiles in the eye and a suspicious redness dusting his cheeks, Derek flatly states, “She didn’t appreciate the fact that I bit her, when she was just ‘trying to show reverence to my beastly form’. She might also have been a little... upset about _where_ I bit her as well.”

Stiles’ eyes go wide. “You didn’t-” He gestures at his crotch, relieved when Derek’s own eyes go wide and he immediately starts shaking his head, ebony locks making a light swishing sound with each turn.

“Then where...?”

 _Definitely_ blushing now, Derek raises his gaze to the sky and places his hand behind him, right where his leg-

“By Selene, you bit her on the _ass_?”

Stiles immediately dissolves into a giggling fit, not helped by the way that Derek is glaring at him with ruby red cheeks, arm folded in front of his chest like a petulant child.

“It’s not funny! I’ve been here for Selene knows how long and she did _this_ ,” Derek gestures to his head with an angry flick of his wrist, “when I didn’t apologize after the second day! And I can’t use it to get out the way that you got in, because it tangles up in the hook and I can’t cut it or pull it out!”

Stiles turns somber at the frustration in Derek’s voice, his hand practically _burning_ with the heat the thread is giving off now. Breathing in deep, Stiles pushes himself to his feet and takes a step towards Derek, telling himself that this is his Intended and that someone, somewhere, saw that they needed each other.

“Did she say how to break the spell?”

Derek’s eyes follow Stiles as he makes his way over to him, darting all over his face as each step gets him closer and closer. “She said I had to apologize to her and she would remove it. She laughed when I said that I would rather eat a year’s worth of horse manure, but said that there _was_ one other way that I could be released.”

Stiles stops a mere foot away from Derek, hands still clasped in front of himself as he asks in a voice that may seem too soft for the moment, but he doesn’t think he can speak any louder. “What was it?”

Derek’s gaze darts all over Stiles’ face, eyes dropping more than once to Stiles’ lips, his tongue coming out to wet his own. Watching as Derek’s eyes dilate when Stiles mimics the action, Stiles gently prods, “What was the other way, Derek?”

“My Intended had to find me. Find me and... and I had to let them kiss me.”

Stiles exhales the breath that he didn’t know that he was holding before raising his hand, red thread almost giving off a low glow in the darkness of a room that is only lit by the light of a setting sun.

“Remember the thread that I said lead me to here?” Derek’s gaze is focused on Stiles’ outstretched hand, a longing sort of hope in his eyes. “It actually lifted up as soon as I made it to the base of this tower. It didn’t just lead me here, it led me to _you_.”

“You’re... you’re mine?” Derek’s voice sounds so soft and filled with so much longing, that Stiles almost reaches for him despite himself, drawing back at the last second.

“Yes.” Stiles swallows hard when those eyes are once more focused on him. “Yes, I am yours. If you want me. If you want to invoke a Courting, we could do that as well. I know that just because I am your Intended, it doesn’t mean that it is a romantic connection. I would be more than willing to kiss you and become your best friend or advisor-”

“Stiles.” Derek grabs Stiles’ hand, the hand that held the string on it, in his own and pulls Stiles against him.

A blinding warmth suffuses Stiles’ entire body, a soft gasp from Derek telling Stiles that he can feel it too, before what looks like the same red thread winds around where both Stiles and Derek’s hands were clasped together before sinking into their skins.

Stiles stares at where the thread disappeared, startling when Derek speaks again.

“It was you.”

Stiles looks up from their hands, heart caught in his throat when he realizes how close the pair of them are, but Derek doesn’t look away. As a matter of fact, he pulls Stiles even  _closer_.

“The scent that I followed in the woods, the one that had me so on edge... I thought I was dreaming when you found my tower and when you answered me when I called down to you. No one... no one else even _looked up_ , no matter how loudly I yelled and screamed. That’s half the reason I wanted you to leave, because I didn’t want you to be a dream that disappeared as soon as I threw my hair down. Then you came through the window, smelling like fresh bread and dried herbs and _home-_ ”

Derek shakes his head and buries his face in Stiles’ throat, breathing in deep a few times, seeming to steady himself with every inhale. After a few minutes, Derek finally pulls away from Stiles neck, but he dips forward to Stiles’ lips, pausing just before they touch.

“If I kiss you, it will be to Bond with you, to take you as my Intended and Mate. Do you accept that? Do you accept _me_?”

Stiles can’t do anything but wrap his hand around Derek’s neck and pull him forward, practically mashing their lips together and swallowing Derek’s gasp of pleasure at the motion. There is a slight swishing sound filling the room, but it is more background noise as Stiles presses as close as he possibly can to his Intended, a familiar warmth no longer focused on his hand, but blooming outward from his entire body.

When he finally pulls away due to a severe lack of oxygen, he startles a little bit at seeing the shortened hair that just falls to the base of Derek’s skull and the fact that he can’t see the hair anywhere else in the tower.

Derek looks around, a slight pout on his lips at Stiles paying attention to anything else than him right now, before his eyes widen at the bareness of the room as well.

“Uh, Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“I just thought of something.”

Derek’s shoulders tense a bit under Stiles’ hands, but he still meets Stiles’ gaze as he asks, “What’s that?”

“Um, how exactly are we supposed to get down?”

Derek blinks, and then a slow, feral smile spreads across his lips before he leans close enough to Stiles that his mouth brushes against Stiles’ with every word, making a shiver travel his entire frame.

“We don’t have to leave right _now_ , do we?”

No, they did not.


End file.
